Equipment for mechanically retrieving tie plates strewn along rail beds have been proposed in the past. One example of a proposed tie plate collection machine can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,655,455 (“the '455 patent”), which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference. The tie plate collection device disclosed in the '455 patent includes a rotating magnetic wheel having a plurality of flanges that extend around its rim. A collection slide of the machine is mounted next to the magnetic wheel. As the magnetic wheel rotates, tie plates attach to the flanges of the wheel and are carried along the wheel until they are “scraped” off the wheel by the collection slide.
In the device disclosed in the '455 patent, tie plates are retrieved from the rail bed and stored for later use. The device, however, is unable to sort the collected tie plates or separate the collected tie plates from other metallic or ferrous debris that may be collected from the rail bed along with the tie plates. Separation, sorting, and orientation of the tie plates is accomplished manually by one or more operators of the machine. However, such a manual solution is time consuming, susceptible to operator error, and increases labor costs for operation of the machine.